Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oliver was still not sure he was getting used to his new life. It seemed like overnight he had gone from a normal, socially awkward teenager with a videogame addiction, to a terrified soldier. Jökull spoke to him infrequently, and even if he had been a nonstop chatterbox, he appeared to know just as little about the island. Somehow Oliver had managed to get in a couple of meals. And find his room again for the night. He had found the training areas, although he had been too intimidated to set foot amongst the hunters practicing there.

And... he had found the labs. This was where he had been assigned most of his tasks, menial duties like cleaning up after the minipets, and sweeping the floors, disinfecting the counters, things like that.

Today he was trudging back through the halls towards the minipet labs, heavily burdened by an armload of laundry. Mostly minipet bedding. Oliver didn't mind letting out some of the minipets to change their cages, but there were some he was dreading. Just like little dogs back in his old life could be scary, so could some of these little monsters...

Glancing to one side of his bundle to make sure he hadn't passed the room, he noticed there was a girl inside one of the labs. He slowed down. Normally he wouldn't talk to girls, not being the sort of shy geek he was, but she looked rather frightened.

He backed up a couple steps, and leaned his back against the door until it swung open. "A-are you okay?" He asked, stammering ever so slightly.

"M-my experiments?" Oliver asked, starting to look almost as nervous and skittish as the girl in the room. "I-I don't have any experiments... just... laundry..." He trailed off, shifting the hamper in his arms. It was starting to get really heavy, as of yet the Life trainee hadn't developed the muscle required for day to day living on the island.

He proceeded to just stand there, rather awkwardly, not sure whether he should continue on his way or go over to help. She didn't look okay, but why was she here, and why did she get left alone?

"Oh, uh, yeah," Oliver said, "They can get like that. Especially the leads, they have their projects..." He lapsed into awkward silence until the door he had been leaning against finally shifted with a little swing. With a squeak the boy nearly fell over. Despite his near stumble he was able to right himself before the hamper could tip. If the clean bedding touched the ground he would probably have to have them washed all over again...

"AH, no it's okay! Really, I can... carry them," Oliver said quickly, hefting the hamper once again to get a better grip. "But you can come with me if you like!" Blurting out the offer so suddenly seemed to take the young trainee by surprise, so much so that he almost fell over again, stumbling back out through the swinging doors. "Sorry, this is kinda top-heavy..."

"Nono, it's okay! I got it!" Oliver might not have been very strong, or brave, or even very manly, but he was man enough not to admit the only thing keeping the whole pile of laundry from tumbling over was that it was braced against his chest. And that he was terrified of having a single blanket hit the floor. He still wasn't entirely sure the island was a safe place, and constantly worried someone was going to swoop in and put him out of his misery at the very first excuse.

He led the way down the hall, and stopped briefly to find his bearings at a crossing corridor before wandering to the left. Three doors down, and he let out a sigh of relief. "Okay, here it is," Oliver said over the hamper, pushing open the door to a clinically clean room with an examining table in the center and one long wall of minipets.

A couple made disturbed noises, Oliver hadn't been there long enough to receive any favourable response from his entry. But that was okay. He was used to it.

"I dunno," Oliver replied, after taking a second or two to catch his breath. "Small ones I guess." His answer must have been sufficient, there was no rumbling laugh in his head to indicate otherwise. "Some of them are kinda nice though."

He went over to one of them, where something small and fluffy was sleeping against the barred door. He stuck one finger in and gave it a little scratch, and aside from a slight shifting of fluff there was no response. "I like this one, it's really calm. And it's never tried to bite me," he said with a smile.

Leaving the minipets for the moment, Oliver went about grabbing supplies for minipet cage cleaning. In a way these sorts of menial tasks were good for him, sometimes the routine activities were the best way to keep his mind from wandering down rabbit holes and getting stuck in dark places. "I'm gonna let one out in a minute," he cautioned, a plastic bag in one hand and a mini dust brush in the other. "If you want, you can sit on the stool over there, they won't even touch you if you keep your feet up."

Not that any of the ones he let wander were particularly nasty, but she seemed nervous enough as it was. It would be better to let her approach the minipets at her own pace.

Oliver seemed very much reassured by her shift in attitude. His own views towards the little creatures had varied, having never owned a pet, he couldn't compare them to the personalities of a dog or a cat. And often they were in a class all their own. Most of them he was afraid of, at least until he knew they weren't going to be trouble.

"It's not that big a deal, really," he said, crouching down to peer into the lowest occupied cage. "They just kinda wander around."

He opened the latch, and out hopped a little canine thing. It had perky ears and a smug look to it, like the world's smallest shiba inu. Oliver let it jump out, and then proceeded to pull out the old bedding, fold it, and begin to clean out the old food and debris that had been spilled. It was just like cleaning any animal's cage, and once it was empty and wiped down, the new bedding went in.

The mini shiba, for it's part, wandered to the far side of the room and lifted one leg to pee on the wall.

"That's... his pee spot." Oliver said sheepishly. "No matter how many times I clean it, he still goes right there."

The little dog looked very sullen and displeased, and promptly trotted away from Noemi. It began sniffing along the bottom of some cupboards until Oliver called it with a FEAR candy in hand. Once it was safely locked up back in it's cage, he let out the next minipet. A fluffy dog this time.

"I don't know if the leaders to much with minipets, mostly they just order other people to do stuff."

The fluffy dog went straight to where the first one had peed, and lifted it's leg. It stubbornly tried to pee higher up on the wall.